Top 5 game-changing game innovations

uh, so where's the article about the 'top 5 innovations'???

Dude, You missed #1. The pause button was first implimented on the Atari 5200 and it was a revelation. No more having your mom call you and giving your controller to you little sister then only to return to all dead men!

While it wasn't the first to introduce online gaming, I think XboxLive will prove to be one of the most important innovations in gaming. It was the first console-based service that actually worked, bringing millions of gamers together over internet connections. It established that DLC could be an important part of a developers economics, that digital downloads could exist and thrive in the console space, and that the game console could be an effective gateway to the living room. It made all of this a pretty brainless process, mostly plug-n-play, and shaped consumer expectations for what console-based online gaming should be about. For sure there are problems with it, from cost to service offerings, but it established the model and is still the leader. I think in 10 years people will look back and say that we couldn't have gotten to where we will be without XboxLive.

Of course, in ten years we could be saying OnLive is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or that Sony's Home was were it really all came together. Maybe Wii motion controls and non-game games will be the thing. We'll just have to wait and see.

Lets not forget massively multiplayer online games. With its good and bad, MMOGs or MMORPGs allow social interaction and chang the way people are presently playing games more than any other development than perhaps first person perspective.

I totally agree with cb-994873. Being able to pause a game is just as important as saving it. There are other things more important in life then games and some times you just gotta put it on pause to deal with it. Heck, the ability to pause or safely stop a game in a convienent or frequent point becomes key factors when games are rated. It's one of the main reason I love my PSP. It's sleep mode is one big pause function. Ah sleep mode. You save so much time loading.

Dont forget wireless controllers!  Remember jumbled mess under your TV back in the Sega Genesis days.  The wires just never wound around the controller and made it so the system always had to be under your TV. 

Wireless is the way to go.  When I got my PS3 I didn't even know about it.  I was a bit excited. 

The ability to immerse yourself in the video games gets a boost because of High Definition, and blue-ray games. Never before have we had the technology to make such realistic looking games

How did multi-player just qualify for honorable mention? If you remember a little farther back, M.U.L.E. was a game changer, when the game was just getting started.

I'm going to jump on the Online Gaming bandwagon here. I'd actually put it above the two game controllers and the Save option.

Saving games had been around on computers long before Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo

How about the intellivision intellivoice add-on. I think that was the first to use voice synthesizers. Space Spartans and B-17 Bomber for the Intellivision were games ahead of their time.

What about portable memory cards.

Randomly generated environments like Diablo blew my mind. Play the same game, but differently every time.

Starflight was my 'game changing' game. It introduced space exploration and combat. It also had spaceship upgrades and the need to find resources to fund your exporation.

No one seemed to mention the cartridge games when it comes to gaming systems. Pong was great but c'mon.... What computer nerd didn't purchase a gaming system when the Atari 2600 was made available or, for that matter the Magnavox Odyssey or Mattel's Intellivision? Oddly enough, I can remember a news report that told us that "someday you could play more than one game on a console and the games would be cartridge based". Wait! Am I that old? Ouch!

The buttons on the NES control pad are no different from the button on the Atari 2600 joystick, except there are two of them and they are in a slightly different place. I think it's a stretch to consider that an innovation, while relegating Online Play to an honorable mention.

Overall, pretty weak.

Online play was definitely a game changer. no longer relegated to just playing with friends at LAN parties, online became the first real social network. Whether its shooters, RTS games or the wide ranging worlds of MMOs online play changed gaming forever.

Vic Tokai's "Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode" for the NES had multiple first person shooter levels (albeit crude), and it was released in September of 1988; four years BEFORE "Wolfenstein 3D". I'm just sayin'...

I'm surprised that the multiplayer attribute was only given an honorable mention. MMORPGs have changed the very nature of games from playing against a computer to playing against other people.  Computers - for all their sophistication - fall into patterns in game-playing, and after going through the motions for a few cycles, you can figure out its weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  On the other hand, there will always be an unpredictable element to playing other people online, as people are far more innovative and complex.  Furthermore, there is a social element to online gaming, where you can make and meet friends.  Not that the social element replaces real life, but it gives a degree of emotion to the game that you cannot get when playing a console.

Platform games initially appeared at the beginning of the 1980s, when many video game genres were just beginning to form. Because of the technical limitations of the day, early examples were confined to a static playing field, generally viewed in profile. While platformers offered a new kind of gameplay, they still borrowed from earlier games. in 1978, was the first game to feature a jumping character, making it the genre's earliest ancestor. Players could not control the direction of the jump however, nor was it possible to jump between different platforms, only to fall off either side of the one platform on screen

Platform games initially appeared at the beginning of the 1980s, when many video game genres were just beginning to form. Because of the technical limitations of the day, early examples were confined to a static playing field, generally viewed in profile. While platformers offered a new kind of gameplay, they still borrowed from earlier games. in 1978, was the first game to feature a jumping character, making it the genre's earliest ancestor. Players could not control the direction of the jump however, nor was it possible to jump between different platforms, only to fall off either side of the one platform on screen

Where's Steam at on the list? I think that online communities/games management is going to change the entire feel of things for gamers and is going to redefine how games are marketed.

AFAIC, it already has. I haven't bought a non-Steam game in years.

I'm in complete agreement with you when you say you're suprised that MMO's only got honorable mention. I cannot tell you all how much they've changed me and my own personality. I'm a shy person by nature, always have been, but ever since I started playing MMO's, it has helped somewhat with that problem. I have more friends online than I do IRL, but thats better than no friends at all, as would be the case without ever being introduced to MMO's. They connect the world in a way that phones and movies and just plain internet probably never can.

MMO's...meh. I still consider my video games a quiet break from people :P

If I want to hang out, I'll call you! :)

Anyone here play World of Warcraft?